


do the devil’s work

by prettydizzeed



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Betrayal, Exes, M/M, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 08:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20224900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: Zeke walks down the Falcon’s ramp, still at it with that awkward saunter of his after all this time, and goddamn it, he’s still beautiful.





	do the devil’s work

**Author's Note:**

> this was written as part of the get down fanwork exchange for @shaolin-is-fantastic on tumblr, who requested a star wars au!
> 
> a huge thank you to brightclam for organizing the exchange again!!
> 
> the title is from “Shaolin’s Theme / Pray”

A staff member tells him there’s a ship on the landing dock, and his first thought is that he hopes he doesn’t recognize it. But of course it’s the Falcon, what else would it be, what other kind of hand would the universe deal him? Which is the wrong thought process to start, because both sabacc and hands only make him think of the man he wishes weren’t about to emerge from the ship.

Zeke walks down the Falcon’s ramp, still at it with that awkward saunter of his after all this time, and goddamn it, he’s still beautiful. Still something of a black hole, impossible to turn away from, and Shao’s still drawn in despite all his best efforts.

Shao is tempted to let his thoughts go down the route of ‘of all the governor’s mansions in all the galaxy, you had to waltz into mine like you own the place,’ but he can’t indulge it because no, this is clearly intentional, and after the way things ended, Zeke wouldn’t be here unless he wanted—no, _ needed_—something from him.

Still—

Still. It is good to see him. Even though Shao deeply hates himself for thinking it.

The thing is, when he got the message from Cadillac, he almost prayed for the first time. He believes in the Force—Zeke thinks it’s a load of bullshit, he’s aware, but as usual, Shao knows better—but it’s not the kind of belief that makes him delusional enough to think he could ask the mystical motor of the universe to set or stop anything in motion in his life. And yet his knees just about met the floor. His hands just about folded. He was just about desperate enough to utter some sort of _ let this cup pass from me _ interspersed with a thousand iterations of _ keep him safe_. 

It wouldn’t have done any good, and he had shit to do, and so he didn’t. But god, for a moment, he’d wanted to more than he’d ever wanted anything, with one exception.

“Why, you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler. You’ve got a lot of guts coming here after what you pulled.”

Zeke flinches from Shao’s arm like he thinks Shao’s going to hit him, is still stiff when Shao pulls him into a hug. Fair enough.

“How ya doing, you old pirate?” Shao asks, grinning, dropping that act and picking up another one. “So good to see you!” It sounds fake even to his own ears, but Zeke seems too shocked to pick up on that. 

“Where you been? What’re you doing here?” he asks. What he wants to say is _ how dare you_, what he wants to say is _ run_.

“Ah, repairs,” Zeke says, “I thought you could help me out,” and he doesn’t even have the decency to sound chagrined about it. As if Shao has just been sitting on his ass waiting for him for the past decade.

Fuck that. He’s been busy; he has the reputation and the income and the stats on improvement in quality of life for citizens of Cloud City to prove it, and if he wonders sometimes in the middle of the night if he stuck around here just so Zeke would know where to find him, well, no one needs to know.

“What’ve you done to my ship?” Shao asks, because he never shot Zeke down when he asked for a favor in the old days, and apparently old habits die hard, even ones he thought he’d buried years back.

“Your ship?” Zeke asks, a little too much laughter in his voice for it to be a demand. “Hey, remember, you lost her to me fair and square.”

At least three empty bottles on the table between them. A cocky grin on Zeke’s face, and it sounds like a joke, almost, his _ How about we up the stakes? _ Sealing the bet with a kiss. Fair and square.

The memory makes him bitter enough to turn to the woman standing slightly behind Zeke, to tilt his head a bit, to look at her a beat too long, to ask, “Hello, what have we here?”

Zeke stiffens. _ Fair and square_, Shao thinks, and continues, “I’m Shaolin Fantastic; I’m the administrator of this facility. And who might you be?”

“Mylene,” she says, and he’s hoping despite himself that she’s smart enough to realize that her refusal to offer a last name would be an immediate red flag for anyone else. The fact that it isn’t for him doesn’t make things better for her—he doesn’t need her to say it; he’s seen the briefing.

She might be counting on it coming across as pure pettiness, in which case she would’ve been successful under different circumstances, ones in which the cards weren’t stacked against her since before she debarked. 

“Welcome, Mylene,” he says, and kisses her hand, because he’s a gentleman, and not at all because of the way Zeke’s eyes narrow, the sense memory of Zeke’s palm in his and Zeke’s skin beneath his lips, intangible as a Force ghost.

“Alright, alright,” Zeke says, rolling his eyes. “You old smoothie.”

“What’s wrong with the Falcon?” Shao asks, unwilling to address that, unsure if it’d hurt Zeke more to raise his eyebrow or to let it go, unsure which he’d rather do if he knew.

“Hyperdrive,” Zeke says, folding his arms, and of fucking course it is. He’s still laying on it too hard for short bursts, Shao is sure, all strength and no finesse. Figures.

“I’ll get my people to work on it,” Shao says, both a subtle boast and a boundary. He’s not about to let things go back to the two of them covered in grease, clangs of metal on metal echoing throughout whatever hangar they were renting a space in by the hour, sharing a ‘fresher afterwards because those places always charged by the stall, the timer counting down and Zeke’s tired hands hastily soaping Shao’s back.

“Good,” Zeke replies, and Shao turns his head so Zeke can’t see his throat as he swallows.

“You know that ship saved my life quite a few times.” _ So did you. _ “She’s the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.” _ We were gonna be kings, remember? All this time later, I’m still not sure which of us is closer to getting there. _

“How’s the gas line?” Zeke asks, and Shao shouldn’t care that he remembered. “Still paying off for you?”

“Oh, not as well as I would like,” Shao responds, another boast; he’s doing well, clearly, and it’s a luxury to not be satisfied with that. “We’re a small outpost and not very self-sufficient,” he continues, “and I’ve had some line problems of every kind, I’ve had labor difficulties, I’ve had–”

Zeke is laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Shao asks, and it comes out far less combative than he intended, less like he’s offended and more like he just wants to be in on the joke.

“You,” Zeke says, shameless as anything. “Listen to you, you sound like a businessman, a responsible leader. Who’d have thought that, huh?”

_ Me_, Shao thinks, _ you if you’d been paying attention_, but what his mouth says, entirely without his permission, is, “You know, seeing you sure brings back a few things.”

That just sits in the air for a second, but not long enough for Shao to figure out how to cover it up or to pick an innocuous story to tell Mylene, who’s surely listening behind them.

“Yeah,” Zeke says. There’s the slightest pause. They’re both just looking at each other, quiet and tense for only some of the same reasons, the moment charged like kyber, all that power in it, all that heart. Shao wants to press Zeke into the wall and ask to kiss him, wants to allow himself the vulnerability just one more time. He wants to cough and watch the moment shatter like a wine bottle dropped from the roof of a shitty dive bar on Coruscant. He wants to call in a maintenance worker to replace all the floors so he’ll never be able to haunt himself with the echo of Zeke’s footfalls through the hallway.

It’d never work, of course, but the thought’s a comfort. Sort of.

“Yeah, I’m responsible these days,” Shao agrees, smooth as if the interlude never happened, as if Zeke isn’t still throwing him off his rhythm, building a new beat in the time it takes Shao to catch his balance, “price you pay for being successful.” 

He leads them down the hall, leaves them to themselves for a bit, lets them freshen up. Ever the gracious host; never the ex-lover pretending he doesn’t notice the way Zeke looks at Mylene, the way their hands brush.

He wishes that was enough to make this worth it. But no—it’s not personal, not on that level. It’s about the kids playing too close to the quarries and the teenagers smoking and causing trouble behind the dive bars and the parents who don’t have to stay up talking in hushed voices over their dining room tables, not yet. It’s about all the sky he can see from his balcony, endless in every direction, and not an Empire flag to be found.

He leads them to the dining room, to their doom, and he doesn’t flinch at the sound of Zeke’s gunshots or the sight of Cadillac. Instead, he says he’s sorry, and Zeke says, full of marble and fury and barely-veiled grief, “Yeah, I’m sorry, too.”

He used to be better at this, he’s sure, used to be able to spot a trick card from three tables away, used to catch his opponent’s wrist when they’d moved less than a millimeter to slip something out of their sleeve. He used to trust a deal to go sour more than he trusted his own hands to get him out of it, and he used to always get out of it. He’s lost his gun callouses. He’s gone soft. 

Who’d have thought that, huh?

He watches them shove the man he loves—still, _ still_, goddamn it, fucking loves—into the carbonite, watches Zeke stiffen and go still, and it’s like some fucking fairytale, like the worst part of every story, the briars and the apple and the glass shards and the clock always, always out of time. And suddenly he can barely stand beneath the crushing knowledge that he can’t save them all, his people, no matter what he does; he can’t protect them even if he gives up everything that means anything to him—

But Zeke, after everything—before everything, even, honestly—always—is his people, too. 

And maybe he can save at least one.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m on tumblr @genderqueercrowley if you want to say hi!


End file.
